A relatively small number of Kearsarge Regional Middle School students have in recent months incorporated the N-word into casual conversation, made Nazi salutes and questioned classmates of color about their citizenship status.
The notable increase in racist and hate-based conduct has disturbed educators, principal Steve Paterson wrote in a message to families last week. He called for a community-wide response to the behavior.
“Addressing these issues as isolated events will not solve the underlying challenges we face,” Paterson wrote.
The conduct has played out primarily online, through apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, and in group text chats and communication through video game portals, Paterson said.
But it has also increasingly seeped into the school building. Some of the in-school behavior has targeted specific students, Paterson said.
“It felt like we got a flurry of reports in the last month or two,” he said in an interview. “It felt like it was growing.”
The principal attributed some of the rise in racist conduct to its increasing normalization in the media that students consume.
“They have this online world or their social life outside of school where this kind of thing has become more accepted,” Paterson said. “And then they come into school and they have trouble switching. These are adolescents, so they have trouble navigating that and switching their brains to, ‘Oh, I’m in school now.'”
That experience is not isolated to Kearsarge. Nationally, 32% of students in the U.S. reported experiencing racism in school, according to data from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
In New Hampshire, there were 58 reported instances of bullying based on race, color or national origin last school year, according to data from the Department of Education. (Not all instances of racism in schools are classified as bullying.)
The data doesn’t conclusively indicate whether racism and antisemitism in schools is growing.
School leaders are sometimes reticent to publicly identify a systemic problem, but Paterson said recent conversations with families particularly affected by prejudiced behavior convinced him to send a public message.
“The right approach was to involve the community, not run from the problem,” he said. “I’m not proud of it, but at the same time, the only way that we’re going to address this is if we’re open and we talk about it and we name the behavior. And so that’s the approach I took.”
Kearsarge is a predominantly white school district. Ninety-four percent of its middle school students are white, according to data from the Department of Education.
Paterson said parents told him they were concerned that “Black and brown students were feeling less safe” in the school.
He called on families to engage in “difficult conversations” about behavior that is racist or offensive.
At school, leaders are also working to address the conduct. Their focus is on educating students about the harm their actions cause.
The response differs based on whether the behavior occurs in the building or outside of it. When an incident happens at school, administrators engage in a disciplinary process that focuses on explaining the impact of the student’s actions and, in some cases, engaging in restorative practices. The school relies on a range of educational materials, Paterson said. The discipline process can also involve school suspensions.
A 2021 U.S. Supreme Court case limits what schools can do when the behavior occurs online or otherwise outside of the school premises. When administrators receive reports about conduct in this domain, Paterson calls the parents of the students involved, but the school cannot mandate discipline.
“With in-school discipline, I have a lot more leverage to educate kids,” he said.
This is not the first time in recent years Paterson has called for collective action amid a surge of hate-filled behavior. In 2023, the school worked with the Anti-Defamation League to provide professional development to educators on how to address bias-based incidents. At the time, Kearsarge Regional Middle School was the only school working with the organization in the state, according to Paterson.
Soon after the partnership began, the organization’s focus shifted more intensely to combating antisemitism, which was not the bulk of the conduct Kearsarge was experiencing at the time. Kearsarge stopped working with the organization at that point, but Paterson said he has received outreach from them in the past week and is hoping to potentially re-establish a partnership.
It can be a challenge to find the appropriate resources to rely upon at times, Paterson said.
“Every case is a little bit different, and so we really try to not take a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said.
Paterson is hopeful that the message he sent last week will encourage everyone at the school to engage in the process of educating students about the impact of racism. Already, he said he has received an outpouring of support from families.
“I’m hoping that it builds a conversation within our community about the things that we’re willing to accept and the ways that we can all partner together to teach our children that these forms of communication — these words —they’re not okay,” he said. “They’re hurtful; they are racist; they are offensive. And that they have no place in our community.”